1902 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 735 
MAPES, THE HEN MAN. 
FEEDING PEACH TREES.—A subscriber writes 
that he has 300 or 400 peach trees that are not thrifty 
and wishes to know whether I would advise an appli¬ 
cation of nitrate of soda. If so, when, how, and how 
much? If they were mine I certainly should try it on 
a part of them at least. As to when, I should say just 
as early in the Spring as the frost is out of the ground. 
I should scatter it on the surface, over the entire root 
system. Little and often is probably better than a 
large dose at one time. I should say that from one 
to two quarts to each tree, according to size, will be 
a safe application. 
Can a plant or an animal starve in the midst of 
plenty? Here is the Deacon’s contribution, which 
may help to make it plainer to some of us: 
“What happened to tlve cat?” he was asked, as he 
came carrying the emaciated form of a dead cat out 
of a rat-proof corncrib. 
“Starved to death.” 
“What! with all that corn in the crib?” 
“Humph! A cat can’t live on corn.” 
There were hundreds of bushels of food in the crib, 
yet the cat had starved to death. Now introduce a 
few colonies of rats and mice into the corn crib, and 
pussy will grow fat and sleek. There is no more food 
there than before, but the mice will convert it into 
a form in which it is available for pussy. Again, 
place a newly-born kitten in the corncrib, with plenty 
of mice at work turning the corn into food that is 
available for a grown cat, and the kitten will still 
starve. If, however, you place the kitten’s mother 
also in the crib she can reconvert the mice into milk, 
, which is available as food for the kitten. 
On page 463 Mr. Mapes says that he considers wheat 
alone the very best of the single grains for hens. Wheat 
alone, in connection with free range, can be depended on 
to give good results where the flock is not too large. 
Then on page 623 he says at one time wheat could be 
bought as cheaply as corn, and he bought a carload, and 
substituting wheat for corn, thought he was doing a fine 
thing, but disease broke out in his flocks and the egg 
yield fell off. Does Mr. Mapes claim that the wheat was 
the cause of disease breaking out in his flock? He says 
farther down on page 623 that a feed with a nutritive 
ratio of 1:5.6 gave better results than a narrower one. 
According to the figures I have at hand the nutritive 
ratio of wheat is 1:7.4, a somewhat wider ration than Mr. 
Mapes claims is right, yet he claims that wheat is a 
protein feed. These are some of the things I would 
like to have Mr. Mapes make plain. j. r. w. 
Adamsville, N. Y. 
CHANGING RATIONS.—My experience with the 
car of wheat referred to occurred a number of years 
ago, before I had given much attention to the subject 
of balanced rations. At that time I was using whole 
grain at night and a mash in the morning. Follow¬ 
ing the advice of my State Agricultural Experiment 
Station and others, I was trying to get a narrow nu¬ 
tritive ratio, so the morning mash was composed 
largely of protein feeds. This balanced up the corn 
at night, and was giving me good results. I presume 
I had struck a good balanced ration by accident. 
When I changed from corn to wheat at night I made 
no change in the morning mash. This made the ratio 
of the day’s allowance narrower. Do you get the idea? 
Had I changed the morning feed to a more carbona¬ 
ceous mixture no bad results would likely have fol¬ 
lowed. “Does Mr. Mapes claim that the wheat was 
the cause of disease breaking out in his flocks?” I 
suspect that it was. A ration can be unbalanced in 
either direction. An excess of nitrogenous matter I 
consider more dangerous than an excess of carbona¬ 
ceous matter. I believe that when the food supplied 
furnishes just enough of each element to supply the 
needs, without clogging up the system with too much 
of the other element, the system is in best condition 
to resist disease germs. 
ROUP IN PURCHASED BIRDS.—Those chickens 
recently purchased in the New York market have had 
a turn of roup. Fifteen of the cockerels were weighed 
and placed in a small pen October 1 in order to see 
how many pounds of feed it would take to make a 
pound of gain. The 15 birds weighed 44 pounds cn 
that date. Fifty pounds of dry feed were weighed out 
at the same time. They were fed as much as they 
would eat with a good relish, three times a day, wet 
with an equal weight of skim-milk. By Octooer 15 
they had eaten the last of the 50 pounds of feed, and 
were again weighed, weighing 56 pounds, a gain of 
12 pounds. I noticed that two of the lot had roup, 
within a day or two after the experiment began, as 
evidenced by the offensive discharge from the nos¬ 
trils and emaciated condition. They were allowed to 
remain, however, since roup is one of the risks to be 
expected in purchasing and fattening poultry. These 
two birds apparently ate their full share of the feed, 
but lost instead of gained weight. The two only 
weighed four pounds 13 ounces at the close of the 
test. Even with this drawback it only required a 
little over four pounds of feed and the same of skim- 
milk to produce a pound of gain. I am satisfied that 
by feeding a poorly balanced ration to these New 
York birds I could develop swelled heads and the 
worst forms of roup in a few days. 
Being a novice at the business I apply to you through 
The R. N.-Y. I have raised this year 10 vefy fine P. 
Rocks. I paid $2.50 for a sitting of eggs. Now three 
have long feathers on their feet and lower legs. Which 
shall I keep for breeding? I thought perfectly clean 
legs were right. F , c . M- 
Buffalo, N. Y. 
POULTRY STANDARDS.—F. C. M. has only to look 
in the American Standard of Perfection to learn that 
Plymouth Rocks should have feet and legs free from 
feathers. On account of the difficulty of determining 
the exact parentage of birds where they are kept in 
flocks, no attempt has yet been made, so far as I 
knW, to secure a registry of purebred poultry. Any 
bird having the required color, appearance, etc., 
passes in the show room as pure. A man may think 
he has a purebred when in reality it is only a mon¬ 
grel. A neighbor who has gone Rhode Island Red 
crazy, went into ecstacies last Winter over a choice 
specimen he saw in one of my pens. She was noth¬ 
ing but a cross between Buff Cochin and P. Rock. 
PROFITABLE PORK.—Our eleventh sow only had 
six pigs. This makes 88 pigs from 11 sows. How 
much have the 88 pigs cost at weaning time? Not to 
exceed a dollar each. Two litters per year can be ex¬ 
pected, and three pounds of feed per day is a fair 
allowance. These 11 sows have been fed wheat mid¬ 
dlings and hominy chop, equal parts. They got only 
eight pounds of the mixture, morning and night, 
thrown to them dry, during the Summer when they 
were at pasture. They get six pounds each per day, 
while suckling their pigs, in slop form. They are in 
good flesh, and the pigs are growing well. We have 
been debating the advisability of replacing our grade 
Poland China boar with a purebred of some kind, and 
have about decided to raise another grade. We are 
endeavoring to turn western feed into pork, at a profit 
on an eastern farm, and still have a good deal of faith 
in my old neighbor’s maxim that “the breed is in the 
DR. CUMMINGS PEACH. Fig. 302. 
mouth.” The pig we have selected is one of a litter 
of nine that were six weeks old October 12. On that 
date he weighed 30 pounds, and a number of his mates 
are equally as good. His mother was purchased at 
an auction in the vicinity, and has a record of 17 pigs 
at one birth. His sire is also the sire of Billy G., 
whose picture appears on page 701. 
The Berkshire man, page 714, seems to doubt that 
“the breed is in the mouth,” and says: “I am confi¬ 
dent that if Mapes, the hen man, will weigh Billy G. 
on any date that one of the Berkshires with a yard- 
long pedigree at the same age, will weigh as much as 
Billy G.” Billy G. was weighed on June 13, 1902, at 
the age of t.wo months .and 21 days, when he weighed 
84 pounds, having made a gain of 49 pounds in the 
previous 28 days. When the Berkshire man uses his 
scales and pedigreed pigs and makes a better show¬ 
ing, Billy G. will take off his hat to aristocracy. 
O. W. MAPES. 
MR. STRINGFELLOW ON THE HITCHINGS 
ORCHARD. 
A subscriber makes an inquiry by letter that has 
doubtless suggested itself to many more of your read¬ 
ers, viz., if Grant G. Hitchings has obtained such good 
results from the sod and mulch method with long- 
rooted trees in large holes, why should growers run 
the risk of losing a part of their trees, as seems to 
have happened to some, from root-pruning and plant¬ 
ing in small holes? I will answer this inquiry with a 
statement made by W. H. Ritter, of Springfield, Mo., 
in the October issue of the Practical Fruit Grower: 
In the Spring of 1901 I planted four peach trees, two of 
them the old way and two by the crowbar method. They 
were set in my yard on nearly level ground, and were 
not cultivated, but lightly mulched. The two trees 
planted the old way, with all the roots, started to grow 
very early, and made a fair growth for so dry a season, 
but in August the leaves came off and one of them died; 
the other died back to the ground and so had to start 
from the ground this year. This season it has made a 
growth of two feet. The crowbar trees were trimmed 
to a cane 20 inches high [Too long. H. M. S.], and an side 
roots were cut off and the tap roots cut back to eight or 
10 inches [four were enough]. I made holes for them in 
the hard gravel land that never was cultivated, with a 
crowbar, same as I do for a fence post. I then got a 
shovelful of rich surface soil and put in the two holes, 
then with the crowbar made a hole in the middle of this 
soil, put the trees down and tamped them with a small 
stick, filling in more earth until full. Then I poured a 
bucket of water around each tree and mulched them. 
Results: These two trees just stood there like two sticks 
stuck in the ground till about the last of June, when all 
at once they took a notion to grow and they grew till 
frost killed the leaves. This last Spring they began 
early and are now as high as my head. 
This all happened in about the driest year ever 
known in the West. The long-rooted trees were 
planted about as Mr. Hitchings doubtless planted his, 
though the season must have been very different. Mr. 
Ritter’s experience brings out one of the strongest 
points for short roots, viz., deep rooting and the abil¬ 
ity to resist drought not only the first year, but ever 
afterwards. Remarkable as Mr. Hitchings’s orchard 
has proved during the past few wet seasons, I am con¬ 
fident that the fruit will not hold up in size in a very 
dry year, as it would had the trees been root-pruned. 
The past few years having been exceptionally wet in 
the East were highly favorable to trees planted with 
long roots, but a change will surely come, and I warn 
those who anticipate setting such trees on unbroken 
ground in large holes that they run a great risk of 
losing a large part of them if the Summer is dry, just 
as Mr. Ritter did. But the subscriber alluded to above 
asked me another question which also is of interest to 
those who think of making a change in orchard meth¬ 
ods, and that was whether I attached great import¬ 
ance to the “man behind the tree” in growing such 
an orchard. I must say that I do not. The most ordi¬ 
nary fruit grower ought to be able to bring the trees 
into bearing, once they are planted, for there is really 
nothing to do but mow, mulch and watch the trees 
grow until they begin to bear. The “man behind the 
tree” begins to figure in great shape, however, when 
spraying, gathering and marketing of the fruit be¬ 
gins. And now as to sod planting in general. Allow 
me to state that I do not advise it exclusively, as some 
seem to think. I make no allusion in my book to 
crowbar or driven holes in sod, the idea being an 
afterthought several years ago, and intended to apply 
solely to abandoned farms too poor to cultivate, rocky 
land and steep hillsides in sections like the Middle 
and Eastern States with plenty of rainfall. I take it 
that few people with good tillable land are willing or 
can afford to lose the use of the land so long. All 
such can be devoted to cultivated crops, keeping the 
trees clean also, until they begin to bear, when cul¬ 
tivation should cease and the orchard be treated as 
Mr. Hitchings treats his. il m. stringeellow. 
A BARKED KIEFFER.—I notice an interesting item 
concerning a Kieffer pear tree in Massachusetts on 
page 704. I had the pleasure of watching a similar 
case last Summer. Last Spring a cat pursued by dogs 
sought refuge in a very healthy Kieffer pear tree that 
had been set about 10 years. The dogs in their de¬ 
termined effort to get the cat chewed and pulled every 
bit of the bark off the tree from six inches above the 
ground to the branches. Not a piece of bark was left 
on the trunk. We expected that of course the tree was 
dead, but did not cut it down, and were greatly sur¬ 
prised to see the tree put out leaves and blossom, and 
still more surprised at the immense crop of fruit it 
bore, and fine fruit it was. The leaves are now drop¬ 
ping, and we will wait to see what freak trick it per¬ 
forms next season. henry t. moon. 
Pennsylvania. 
